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Vista will not shutdown or restart

Question

Whenever I try to shutdown or restart in Vista, I see the message "shutting down", and then just a black screen with the computer still on. I have to hold the power button for 4 seconds for the machine to turn off. This happens with every nVidia graphics driver after 100.65. 100.65 has another issue, that make it unsuitable (does not retain colour correction info). I've also tried disabling nvidia services to no avail. The latest driver I've tried is Forceware 158.42 Beta.Uninstalling graphicsdriver also makes shutdown work, as well as booting into safemode. Any ideas to fix this?

Edit: I left it on overnight, and it does NOT shutdown. When resetting, I do not get a "Windows did not shut down properly" screen. So it must have completed the shutdown process, but without turning off the computer.

All replies

My machine will reboot, eventually after about 5 minutes or so, but does not shut down.Monitor goes blank and then no signal as if it's ready to either shutdown or reboot then ..................................................................................................................................

It looks like sp1 can't come soon enough, nice job MS as this is a common problem and there is no resolution as of yet.

Guys, try to uninstall the Nvidia driver, and see if the problem disappears. (just for testing of course). If this is the case, please take the time to fill out a bug report at the Nvidia website, so we can get it fixed.

You're welcome. I'm just scouring the Internet trying to get people together in hopes of getting this annoying bug identified and fixed. I encourage everyone to contact Microsoft as well as their video card and motherboard manufacturers...

I have similar issues, removing the gadgets on side had no effect. I also had to disable the Turbo Memory which I think was a waste of $40. The only way I can get the thing to boot is to go into the BIOS and exit it out and then it will boot. THis ussually takes about 4 retries with lengthy waits between the manual power down and boot up, hit the F2 key exactly 3 times with 0.5 secs in between just after repowering.

Asus G2S-A1 Santa Rose T7500 2.2Ghz

nVidia 8600M

4G DDR-2 667

Turbo 1GB Intel TUrbo Mem Card

Vista Ultimate 64 bit (piece of junk)

Windows Experience Index 1.0

Not sure if this headache was caused by switching the Workgroups to MSHOME. Still can not access this shared folders. It did seem to boot up fine before doing this.

Restart takes over 3 mins after shutdown and the screen signal is lost.

Have to manually force power off the PC by holding down the power button for 4 secs.

XP work fine so I don't think its the hardware.

On balance Vista is very promising but sad to say it is starting to look like another case of "don't install a MS operating system until SP1 is released" - that's what I am having to advise my global corporation .. and my airline customers.

my shutdown problem is near identical, Vista is great but has a few problems, i had to hunt the net to find Intel Edition Nforce4 Raid drivers that actually worked, because from nvidia they don't, in fact when i installed them Vistax64 wouldnt even boot!

it does restart & shutdown now but only after about 3 minutes which is a pain, come on microsoft get your act together, Vista is a great OS but these problems need to be sorted out!

The problem with that solution IS some of usare experiencing those very same sorts of issueswithout WITHOUT VISTA in the equation. I am convinced our answer when it comeswill most likely have little, if nothing whatsoeverto do with VISTA I have hunted and huntedfor a month to get my m2n sli deluxe to post.A dozen other people are just as frantic as Ilooking for results with their m2n32 slideluxe.Most of these if not ALL are running other opsthan VISTA. I myself run WINXP-PRO.I humbley admit that the answer seems to be above myhead but it looks to me like those that are winning thefight report several similar findings. The timing on thememory and the system ARE NOT actually withinoperable tolerances as you buy from retailer orreseller. Those winning are sometimes actuallyputting ONE stick of OLDERmemory inand THEN once they get access to bios win from there.A few others I read actually flashed bios backwardsand did above in reverse. They got things in GOmode and then UPDATED back again to latest bios but with ALL components reading other componentsnow things can be tweaked back more fine.Most are unhooking every card, every peripheral, everyextra and having better luck that way, especially NEWvideo cards are causing more problem. I wish I understood, I mean really understood what that4-4-4-12 timing designation meant or what purports to make 'SLI'a better choice. If I could grasp ALL about overclocking would I be better off or ONLY MORE vulnerable to the wiley personal PC's seeming indignance at my ignorance

For me the offender was Norton Internet Security (NIS) (a preinstalled trial). I was having issues with it (as well as the shutdown restart problem) so I decided to remove and replace it with Symantec Antivirus Corporate (SAVC) that I have a license to.

After weeks of having to manually power down the PC I decided to uninstall SAVC to see if it made a difference.... and SAV REFUSED to uninstall. Went to Symantec & got the instructions for a manual uninstall. Now I have ZERO problems shutting down or restarting.

It appears that NIS did not properly remove itself as I found numerous references to it in the registry and the progam folders and files were still on the PC. After I deleted all references to NIS in the registry (and the prog folders...after a reboot), I was able to uninstall SAV. Did a final scan of the registry to remove any left over references to Norton & Symantec (and there were still numerous keys left behind).

Did you check for flaky drivers?..a hung application?..did you do something stupid like install Norton?...did you do anything besides blame Microsoft?

Maybe you should try more constuctive things besides blame Microsoft and make uterly useless post about them "getting their act together". Was that comment intended to motivate anyone or make you feel better about yourself? If this was entirely a Microsoft bug then explain why shutdown and restarts work perfectly fine for me and thousands of other people? Just because you're handy with a screw driver and managed to slap together a few PC components without electrocuting yourself obviously doesn't make you competent enough to actually troubleshoot your own problems.

All my drivers were M/S or system integrator (HP) supplied drivers that came with the system ( and yes I checked to see if there were updates before scouring the web for others with the problem). My system worked perfectly except for the shutdown/restart issue...nothing in the event logs...no hung apps or no nothing (unless you count the events telling me I improperly shutdown my system because it wouldn't do it itself).

I think the reason everyone came here was to see if others were having the same problem (and they are) and to find a solution (not to bash Microsoft). We just want our systems to operate correctly.

Last time I checked, there are thousands of hardware/driver and software combinations that are possible. Since NO vendor is immune from errors, ANY piece of hardware/software is suspect, even M/S.

As far as your"did you do something stupid like install Norton?" commment, (and I assume you are referring to me since I was the one that mentioned Norton) you'll have to take that one up with HP as they pre-installed it with the rest of the unasked for software that they (and other vendors) install to lower their costs. Didn't ask for it and didn't want it. I personally have never been a fan of Norton Internet Security and in my experience it has caused more problems for users than I care to mention. As any user should expect, when you tell an app to uinstall itself, you expect it to do it correctly....in my case, it did not. It gave NO indication that any portion of it was still installed or that it was the culprit to the problem.It wasn't until after I installed SAVC (and subsequently tried to uninstall it) that I had any indiucation that part od NIS was still present. As to why it didn't uninstall correctly, I guess I'll never know....it could be a Symantec problem or a M/S problem .

Are we to believe that JUST because yours (and thousands of other people's) systems are working correctly, that our problem could not be atrributable to M/S? If you even pretend to believe that, maybe you should take some time and browse through the M/S knowledge base. You'll see numerous examples of problems acknowledged by M/S that only affect select groups of users (and in these cases M/S recommends that the patches only be applied by those actually experiencing the issue).

Maybe on your next post, you can help some of the others who still have the problem find a solution (instead of insulting people for expressing their frustration). For those that can't wait, start asking yourself questions. Is your system from a vendor (HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, etc). If so, what does your vendor say/recommed....remember they are responsible for software support for your system, not M/S? Can you isolate when the problem began (was it after you installed a piece of hardware/software) and if so, have you tried uninstalling the hardware/software or starting from a clean Vista install (or restore DVD in the case of a vendor supplied system)? Have you ran sfc to see if the system detects any corrupt files. Have you ran chkdsk to look for a hard drive problem? Have you looked in your event logs for errors? Have you looked in the "Problem Reports and Solutions" and "Reliability Monitor" system apps for problems? Have you looked to see that if the driver versions for ALL your hardware is the most currently available (and written for Vista)? All of the standard troubleshooting procedures apply...I could go on and on.

By the way, I do feel that my troubleshooting abilities are more than competent (as I build, test, and install os/software images on 500+ workstations in my organization as well as troubleshoot and repair hardware and software issues encountered by our 300+ users on a daily basis.

lol what a joke! isnt it strange how none of these problems are present in linux... Ahem.. well as for that reply, i can explain perfectly why it doesnt shutdown ITS THE RAID DRIVERS ON RADI 0 you would think ms would have properly test chipsets from the largest motherboard manufacturer (ASUS nforce4) also i wont go into too much detail how microsoft have totally dropped support for my audigy2ZS's midi port and the fact now the card is as good as useless to me, and am bored with telling people the compatibilty issues vista has so im ending it there.

For me from what I have been able to see its NVIDIA GPU driver related...

I used the remove programs option and removed the NVIDIA drivers then started my computer in safe mode and used Drive Cleaner Pro and then restarted the computer and shut down the computer several times with no problems.

I re loaded the current latest drivers and the problem came back.I repeated the process above and tested again with no problems.I loaded the current NVIDIA Beta drivers and the problem returned.

That is exactly what I've found as well Shawn, as mentioned in my original post. Thanks for posting your similar experience. Hopefully there will be a solution soon, but untill that happens, I urge everyone with the same problem, to fill out a bug report at nvidia.com.

People who do not have the same issue, or who wants to discuss whether MS or Vista "sucks or rocks" should create or post in another thread, thanks

Bug report submitted. I have seen other posts on the vista boards as well as at the nvidia boards with others who have this problem as well.

Just out of curiosity have you recently or ever used the nvidia nTune program to monitor temps or look at or test your system performance?I downloaded the program and used the system monitor a couple of times and then removed the program when It asked me to waive my warranty.It removed with no problems, but I just want to make sure this is not another thing we have in common. I did not agree to waive my warranty so none of the overclocking features opened up, but I am still worried.

I have exactly the same problem as dicribed here only my VGA driver is no NiVida. It is Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family.My brandnew Notebook came with pre-installed Vindows Vista starter and worked fine until I installed the whole Vista Starter program and activated it, that is when the problem started. I even tried to retore to the earliest restore point possible, but it did not work.Strange thing happened after app. 6 days, suddenly it worked perfect. I assumed a downloaded and installed update patch from Microsoft fixed my problem, but when I upgraded the memory after another 3 or 4 days it happened again and remains until today. I already tried to contact Microsoft via their Service Programs, but the Product ID of my activated (shown in the Systems settings!) was refused several times as not correct, so I sent an e-mail to the Microsoft team via the Feedback mailer, but that was already 5 days ago and still remains unanswered.I already tried to solve it in safe mode and strange enough (or maybe not?) in safe mode everything works perfectly! Only back to normal means also back to problem. I find it pretty annoying when Windows Vista is screwing up the system.....Any Help would be highly appreciated!Regards

I seem to be having the same problems, went on holiday came back downloaded all the windows updates then it all started noy shutting down and the like. So did a system restore and it worked fine, soon as i got the windows updates again it kicked off again, so i guess its a buggy update?

Ok for me this was 100% an Nvidia driver/program problem (nTune). Here is how I fixed my Problem.

1. Searched for the word Nvidia from the start button search option.

2. Deleted all folders that said Nvidia Corperation (NOT THE VIDEO DRIVERS, and also NOT the Nvidia files made by Drive Cleaner Pro) NOTE: There was one (1) Reg entry that came up during the search that was from nTune which I deleted.

3. Used Run>regedit >find on the word nvidia and deleted all references to nTune.

4. Used "Advanced Windows Care V2" to clean any Reg entries that were not valid.

5. Removed the Nvidia video drivers using add/remove programs.

6. Tested that the computer would now restart and shut down with no problems.

I have worked with the same issue cut and paste, Whenever I try to shutdown or restart in Vista, I see the message "shutting down", and then just a black screen with the computer still on. I have to hold the power button for 4 seconds for the machine to turn off.

I spent one full day trying every type of scenario you could imagine, I am starting to think is has something to do with ACPI

I tried removing anything that mentioned ACPI in device manager and it restarted and booted like normal until it loaded ACPI.

I have changed various setting in Bios and nothing seems to work. you can email me at gbrownresume@hotmail.com if you would like. I tried the older versions of Nvidia and nothing has fixed the exact same issue that you and others are talking about.

I tried removing anything that mentioned ACPI in device manager and it restarted and booted like normal until it loaded ACPI.

I have changed various setting in Bios and nothing seems to work. you can email me at gbrownresume@hotmail.com if you would like. I tried the older versions of Nvidia and nothing has fixed the exact same issue that you and others are talking about.

I have finally fixed the problem that you are experiencing. I had the same problem, its not nvidia and its not acpi or apci it is the overclock sad to say.

My system would play all games and work fine with my athlon amd x2 3800 overclocked. But when I rebooted, it would not restart just like yours, I tried everything to anything it all never helped the issue until I decreased the bus 1 mhz at a time until it rebooted. gbrownresume at yahoo.com I know you want to stay overclocked but just decrease the speed a little. Note, I have an MSI motherboard also, but I have the msi k8t800 pro if you want to reach me directly

I was having the same problems with shutdown on Vista Business. I'm running a nVidia 8800 on an Asus MB with an AMD processor. I solved my ptoblem by updating the MB BIOS. The BIOS was put out in July and since the upgrade I have had no problems.

I'm having this same problem with a brand new laptop. Interestingly the video adapter isn't NVidia. It's Intel Mobile 945GM Express chipset. I've confirmed that it's most likely associated to the video adapter (not a problem running in safe mode with the VGA base running). I've updated to the latest "Vista approved" drivers and still have the same problem.

I am having the same problems. Vista sometimes will, and sometimes won't shut down. The monitor, keyboard etc will go off except the pc itself, the fans will keep running and the lights stay on.There is nothing showing in Event viewer.My spec is this.

My problem is after normal start up my system will not restart it gets hung up like eyeryone else and the only way out is to hold down the power button till computer turns off, then restart normally. However if I start up and after everything is started and system is ready to go, put it into sleep mode wait till the computer power button starts flashing then wake it up,by tapping the space bar everything is fine. It will do a restart every time. After restarting I have to do the same thing,put it to sleep and wake it up again if I need to use a restart for any reason. JUST SHARING THIS, IT MIGHT BE OF SOME USE.

I just installed vista on a new build and had the same problem. What got rid of the problem for me was updating the Bios. I'm kind of embarassed it took me a reinstall which I didn't need to do. After updating the bios it works like a dream.

Asrock Penryn 1600SLI 110DB

Intel Q9450

8 gigs OCZ

Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

I now have a great running system. Home builds can be a pain sometimes.

had the same problem and yes, multiple norton references where the problem... used the norton removal tool (http://norton.com/nrt) for removing everything and now the computer shutdown as expected... still had to reinstall norton internet security, but hopefully
there should be no problem.

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